


Schatten und Stahl

by Bandearg_Rois



Category: X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Mind Control, Mind Rape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-16
Updated: 2011-12-16
Packaged: 2017-10-27 10:34:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/294854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bandearg_Rois/pseuds/Bandearg_Rois
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She screams when she’s taken, loud enough that everyone in the apartments on either side should be able to hear her, but Charles chose this area too well, finding a place that no one investigates their neighbors. No one notices (or at least they pretend they don't, whichever lets them sleep at night), and she's out before the echoes of her screams return to the flat.</p><p>A story of loss and gain, of finding oneself and losing everything else.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Schatten und Stahl

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for XMenBigBang over at Livejournal and is accompanied by art from the wonderful art from ettoby to be found here: http://ettoby.livejournal.com/76103.html
> 
> I'm so sorry this was supposed to go up on the 11th but there have been numerous electricity issues in my area and so I'm finally getting it up today. *bows to the mods over at xmenbigbang*

  
Erik   


 

He's 14 and his mother is dead in front of him the first time he feels and hears it. He thinks that he must be in shock because in no way should metal  sing  the way it does to him. He can't see anything but her crumpled body, can't hear anything but the metal and his blood pounding and singing in his ears (it hurts and he can't control it and it's too much and not enough at the same time). He runs, hating himself for leaving her but unable to stay, not noticing that the metal walls and roof of their house crumpling inward, changing shape until it's a huge mausoleum in the shape of some kind of flower. He won't see that for a year, when he revisits his home only to find that it's now an outdoor art exhibit and his mother is still inside it somewhere.

 

He searches for her killers, tracking them down and taking them out one by one.He’s  sidetracked from his quest for revenge against petty thieves when he’s stolen from the very streets, used and subjugated by a group simply known as the Lab. He goes kicking and screaming and biting and bending metal until he's knocked unconscious. An echo of something, something familiar, accompanies his fall. He wakes covered in needles and for the first time in a long time, there's no song, only the sound of his blood rushing sluggishly in his ears. It feels like he’s been cut off, the one thing keeping him alive and sane taken from him. He can't concentrate, can't feel anything but the pain of the experiments. 

 

There's one scientist who tries to help, and one day, he hears it. It's faint but the song is there and he feels a rush of fierce joy. His mind calms, even as it races, thinking of the possibilities. It’s only a little at first, like a tiny crack in a dam, not even big enough to block with more than a pinkie, but he revels in it, delights in moving the needles in his skin, no matter how much pain it causes. That echo comes again, like moving the needles is something someone wants him to do, something he’s already done, and he hears counting in German, the steps of a waltz. It takes awhile, but every day the song gets louder until it feels just like it had before, and he knows that the scientist has stopped putting the drugs into his system, stopped cutting him off from his power, has done it on purpose. 

 

In return for the 'kindness', he makes sure that the scientist isn't around when he escapes, killing everyone not a mutant in his path. He has no idea how many he's killed, no idea how many throats he's ripped out with the scalpel he pilfered on his way out, no idea whether they had families, and he really doesn't care. The echo is louder, pushing on his consciousness, as if to tell him that something is wrong, something is different, and he ignores it in his rush of freedom.

 

It takes him weeks, months, to get over what happened, and he doesn't get over it, not really. The echo is a constant throb in his head, now, telling him that he’s missing something, overlooking an important thing. He can’t make heads or tails of it, so he pushes it to the back of his mind, to be forgotten along with his mother’s face. He retreats even further into the Underworld, never giving his name to anyone, never staying anywhere long enough to be noticed. He manages to work odd jobs, keeping them random, giving him enough to live without starving totally, and also without gaining notice from anyone. 

 

He retakes his quest to find his mother's killers, but he's a bit smarter about it, having figured out that one of his old contacts had given him up to the Lab in exchange for not being killed. He couldn’t possibly begin to explain a 16-year-old having contacts, not with any lucidity or anything approaching sense. Only the fact that it was a death threat keeps him from exacting revenge. The poor man has been tortured enough by the thought that he sold a child, and Erik knows all about staying alive at all costs. It's a long time before he reaches anything approaching normal, until the echo quiets on its own.

  
  
Charles   


 

Every time he uses his power, he can remember how it started, the startled look on Cook's face when he, utterly naïve little thing that he was, cheerfully informed her that the little girl in the woods was stealing the food that she was complaining had gone missing. He knows they searched, just as he'd known they wouldn't find her if they searched for 100 years. The household writes it off as his lingering grief, and calls the little girl his 'imaginary friend' and 'coping mechanism', not that he knew what they were talking about at the time.

 

It isn't until months later that he understands that all of his little outbursts, his random bouts of knowledge that he shouldn't know, are because none of them are said out loud. As he realizes, he hears more and more, until his headaches debilitate him, blind him. He’s hospitalized, institutionalized, which just makes it worse, all of the insanity pressing on him from all sides until he learns to block himself off, to surround himself with white noise so that their screams can't hurt him. That almost hurts more, the feeling of cotton in his ears when he can hear perfectly fine, the feeling of a phantom limb being chopped off somewhere along the way. When he stops getting headaches, he gets to go home.

 

Once home, he hears his mother ( _no, not his mother, that spiteful_ _creature_ ) whining in her head about being saddled with him and his 'strange' ways, and he always flinches when her thoughts come around to that, which is often, the all-encompassing vehemence nearly destroying any blocks he manages to get with this... thing. It's still a shock, that he can very nearly see thoughts, even more when he realizes that he could actually change them. He hides from her after that, almost glad when she marries the money-grubbing bastard, meaning her focus changes from him. It makes it easier to pretend that he knows nothing, that he doesn't suspect that his own mother (only she isn't, his mother died when he was a baby leaving him with this harpy who never wanted him in the first place) wants nothing more than to destroy him.

 

The only saving grace is Raven. She's the only thing that keeps him from going insane, helps him when being around his 'mother' becomes too much. His 'mother' has no idea that Raven isn't a part of the family, and his stepfather and brother don't care enough to notice. He begins to realize all of the things he can do with his power, and he's so glad that Raven's always there to keep him from hurting anyone, to keep him from doing things that are unforgivable to absolute strangers. Raven is his savior. The thought that that conclusion is going to prove itself wrong haunts him every day.

 

  
Raven   


 

She doesn't remember her mother. She was born this way, blue skin and orange hair that set her apart from everyone else in the world, and the woman had run for the hills as far as she could tell. Instead of lullabies and rocking chairs, her earliest memories are of hiding out in alleys, just trying to survive another day. She quickly learns how to use her... mutation (she doesn't know there’s a word for it until after she meets Charles, but that comes later), meaning that she could look like a normal little girl, if only for a little while, until she’s startled, or slips, and ends up back where she started, stealing from restaurant dumpsters.

 

She takes to hiding in the forest, stealing when she can, going hungry when she can't. And then she happens upon a big stone house with an amazing amount of food that no one is even eating. She thinks she's found heaven. Until the men come. They search the forest and she uses her ability to avoid them, hiding in plain sight for as long as possible. It's apparently enough, since they soon stop, and she hears no more from the big house. 

 

At first, she thinks about leaving, and then she sees him, the little boy (really how could she call him little when he has to be older than her), and sees how sad and lonely he is. Something in her stalls when she tries to make plans to move on, leaving her with a feeling of anticipation, of knowledge just out of reach. So she waits, wondering when it would be her turn to help someone, not realizing until later that she only wants to find someone like her, with the same fear in their eyes. So she disguises herself as his mother, and almost dies from the pain in her head before he realizes that she was just another lost soul, another scared little kid looking for a friend.

 

She stays with Charles for a long time, both of them healing each other, until Erik. She isn’t there when they meet, but it’s obvious to her what Charles has done, and what Erik is allowing him to do. In the end, everything always comes back to Erik, like he's the true magnetic pole, no matter that she's the reason they're together, the reason that Charles goes a little more mad in her absence. She tries her best when she gets back to help but she's so destroyed by her time in the Lab that it's all she can do to keep herself together.

 

She can't help Erik, can't stop Charles from destroying any chance the two have at a real relationship, something stable that might be able to last past the time that Erik realizes for real that he's being played, controlled so neatly by a boy that can't help it but is an absolute expert, and leaves all of them for good. For once she hopes and prays that Stockholm Syndrome is true, because she won't be able to help Charles if Erik leaves. No one will. If the Steel leaves, the Darkness will fall.

 

  
Charles   


 

The first time, he doesn’t quite know what he’s doing, and the mark sees him. The foreign rage he feels makes him fumble a little, losing control of the man for the space of five breaths, just long enough to get a blade plunged into his shoulder. He immediately tries to freeze him, anger and fear snarling inside him like a knot. The emotions shove him over the edge to a place he never thought he would get to, and the resulting explosion of his power gives him the feedback of at least headaches in the surrounding area, not to mention the twitching pile of flesh that was the mark.

  
With a cursory peek he can tell that the man won’t be using the bathroom by himself, let alone stabbing anyone, for the rest of his natural life. He is reminded of Kurt even as his vision darkens and he feels the rush of thick blood on his shirt. He is vaguely aware of Raven (at least he hopes the orange halo around the person correctly identifies his little sister, no matter her form) bursting in and pulling him out, mumbling about idiot older brothers and stupid powers fucking both of them over.

 

He comes back to himself as she's patching him up, projecting her disappointment so loudly that it causes his headache to become worse than it already was. He pushes at her weakly, as she pokes at him particularly savagely. It hurts, more than it probably should.

 

“You’re an idiot!” she says, glaring at him. In her distress, she’s reverted to her original form, showing just how young she is, and how scared she is under her bravado. Normally he can figure her out with a glance, without even skimming her thoughts, but today he feels like an inept little boy, with an angry little sister and no social cues to go off of.

 

“I won’t let it happen again,” he promises, and she glares harder. That’s obviously not the way to go, but he’s done it all the same. Time to try and fix it, if only a little.

 

“You won’t take on violent clients until you figure out what you’re doing, you mean? You’d better not. I might not be there the next time to patch you up. Do you get that? You could have bled to death if I hadn’t been there!” And then, showing that she’s still his little sister, and just a little kid, she starts to cry. He holds her close, trying to shush her, which is a losing battle all on its own, since he’s not sure how to go about it.

 

Eventually, though, she stops, and he promises her again and again that he’ll be careful, that he won’t let himself get hurt like that again. And he doesn’t. He does, however, get better at the social interactions, plucking the correct moves from the minds of others. It helps almost as much as his other training, though he does manage to take out a lot of the worst of society, the ones that won’t be missed, in his need to learn to focus his powers. At least no one will care about his other needs, though Raven constantly tells him he’s pushing himself down a road he might not be able to handle. He ignores her; she’s only 13, what does she know? As it turns out, she knows quite a lot. If only he was as good a listener as he makes himself out to be.

 

  
Mikhayel   


 

He's been in the Lab for so long that the needles leave scars in his skin, pinpricks large enough to make his arms and legs and chest and face look like swiss cheese (he remembers asking what swiss cheese is). He doesn't remember a time that he hasn't been a pincushion, reacting to every whim of the sadistic men and women that run this place. There's one scientist, though, that's actually kind of nice. He teaches Mikhayel as much as he can, how to read and speak English and German and Swiss (which sounds a lot like German at first, but he soon learns differently) and do sums in his head until he can count to three million and even higher (though he hasn't made it past three million before the pain sends him under, he's confident that he can, if he has to).

 

His name is Hank and Mikhayel finds out that he's a mutant, too, just like him, only not, since he looks normal. Mikhayel thinks that his mutation is his brain, able to learn anything he wants just by looking at it, but Hank tells him (after turning off the recorders and cameras of course) that it's not his brain, it's his feet. He wants so badly to ask what's wrong with his feet, ask to see, but that's dangerous and so he doesn't, doesn't even ask Hank if he knows his mutation. He's been here so long he can't remember anything else, doesn't even know what he can do. No one will tell him and he wants to know so badly (but he can't ask, of course he can't, asking questions of anyone but Hank and about anything relating to mutations is wrong, means pain).

 

  
Charles   


 

It gets harder and harder to keep the secrets that he filches separate from his own thoughts, the emotional stamps on the foreign thoughts bleeding over and changing him, sometimes so subtly that he doesn’t realize it, other times hitting him with the force of a Mack truck, making him lock himself in his room and sort through everything until he feels like himself again. All the while Raven sits in the living room, ready with a cup of tea and an ‘I told you so’, making him feel even worse. And that niggling feeling, telling him everything is wrong, is back, stronger than before.

 

He shoves it all into a box, and the more he shoves into it, the more the box rattles, straining at its dimensions and at the hinges, clamoring for his attention. He tries to ignore it, and mostly succeeds, only to start all over again when he opens it to shove more things in. He manages to handle it for awhile, until of course, everything falls apart and Raven is suddenly gone and he’s left on his own.

 

  
Raven   


 

She screams when she’s taken, loud enough that everyone in the apartments on either side should be able to hear her, but Charles chose this area too well, finding a place that no one investigates their neighbors. No one notices (or at least they pretend they don't, whichever lets them sleep at night), and she's out before the echoes of her screams return to the flat.

 

  
Mikhayel   


One day, he's looking through the door to his room (he has his own, he's been here so long and as long as he's medicated he can move however he wishes. The pain doesn't even register anymore) and sees a girl with skin the same color as his, her hair a reddish orange that almost frightens him in its intensity. She's placed next door and he wonders what she can do and where they got her, just as he wonders about every mutant brought into the facility. It's a way to pass the time and it helps him to know that there are others here, that he's not alone in this building, not the only one being hurt (he hears the screams sometimes, especially from the new ones).

  
He remembers the boy that escaped, that Hank had helped after he'd asked, the one who could move metal by barely lifting a finger. He wonders sometimes what happened to him, is both glad that he got out and mad at him because new scientists had been hired and most of them are a hell of a lot worse (he only curses in his head, especially after Hank catches him cursing happily in all the languages he knows, drawing on his table in crayon that he's earned for being a good boy).

 

He's quite aware that he's a little bit crazy (you try being poked and prodded your whole life and stay sane) and that if he ever gets out of here he'll probably be sent to a circus or something (he's read about circuses and the things they do there and it sounds fun, if a little scary). He sits down in front of his door and listens, waiting for the girl's screams. He doesn't have to wait long, and he hates himself a little that he feels a little bit of delight at the sounds. If she's screaming, he's not, and there's a part of him that likes that, likes being able to sit quietly, draw if he's good, maybe get cake (Hank gives him cake once a year but he's not sure why there's a flameless candle in it or why Hank sings to him).

 

It goes on this way and her screams get louder, not softer, not hoarser, and maybe that's her mutation (but no there was that one redheaded boy that had his vocal cords removed because he shattered every window and most of the walls of the Lab when he was first brought in. He feels sorry for Sean, knows that Hank is trying his hardest to help him, but there's not a lot to be done for something that's gone). He waits until Hank comes in and asks him to help the girl. She doesn't belong here (none of them do) and she needs to go home.

  
  
Charles   


 

When she’s first taken, he’s shattered, a stumbling, babbling wreck. He’s lucky that no one approaches him; if they did, they would be dead, and as it is, he’s having trouble keeping himself contained. Eventually, though, he blocks himself out, fills the nooks and crannies with white noise, enough to keep everything at bay. He’s aware that he’s fracturing, but he’ll hold it off as long as he can. The niggling feeling has grown to a roar, and it burns his mind, making him lose some things that he sees as    
him   
, damaging him irreparably.

 

He's alone. He's the Darkness, and it's not like a lot of mutants want to willingly go near him. So when he decides to go after Raven, he first decides to go recruiting. The first one he finds is Alex Summers, a boy who's so broken that at first he can't figure out where to begin (not that he can really be much help, broken as he is himself). And then he finds out that Alex's little brother is in the Lab, and that cements it for him. He starts searching for others who have somehow been wronged by the Lab, and that goes a little easier. 

 

He also notices that one of them must have a latent power to move things, since things bang and crash and scare the shit out of people just when he really needs their attention. That roar whispers to him (he’s lost track of sounds somehow, going completely off of thoughts and it’s a liability that he has to learn to control) that it’s not someone else, but he pushes that thought away, not ready to handle what it means.

 

He smooths frayed nerves, plants gentle suggestions, just enough that they have no idea that they're not helping him on their own. He doesn't care either way what their personal opinions about being controlled are, but he resolves to figure out how to help all of them in return, if only because Raven won't like that he's done it. She’s the shining beacon in his mind, the all-encompassing pain that is always there, the only thing keeping him from going away completely. 

 

The only one he can't seem to get hold of, but who's a bright spot in every mind he's touched that's been in the Lab, is the boy with the affinity for metals. He remembers a story from a few years before about a house in Poland that had mysteriously changed shape after its occupants moved, turning into a large flower-like monument, and instinctively he knows that it is a memorial, and is surprised that this thought hurts him, especially once he finds out what happened to Lensherr's mother.

 

He hasn't thought of his own mother in years, not since his stepfather came down with a rare mental illness that made him think he was a small child for the rest of his life, which wasn't very long, or so Charles had heard at one point. It's not nice, but then again neither was Kurt, and so Charles doesn't waste the time to feel guilty about it. He pretends to, whenever it comes up, so that Raven can pretend to believe him, and they can pretend together that they care about such paltry things as morals when the world is as truly fucked as it is. He's very good at pretending, and so is she. The roar in his mind is like a silent protest to that, somehow saying that it shouldn’t be pretend, that it should be second nature, and he ignores it.

 

So he holds onto a shred of the person Raven pretends she wants him to be, the person that he probably would have been if things were different, if only so that he can help her when he gets her out, give her something familiar. He searches in earnest for Lensherr, but the harder he searches, the less he finds. When he finally runs into the other mutant, it's by complete accident. The roar grows louder, telling him again that it’s not accident, not coincidence, and yet again, he ignores it, focusing on Raven’s pain to keep himself occupied.

  


~*~

  


He's walking down the street toward a cafe when the siren call of a mind hurt, a mind shattered and scotch-taped back together in haphazard pieces, pulls him into a small apartment complex, more a former hotel than an actual set of living quarters. He knocks on a door and isn't surprised when there's no answer. He feels that mind sharpen, anger and fear creating a shield over the pieces, and a part of him he’s not used to waking up, trying to make something happen that he’s not sure he wants, or even knows.

 

 _Calm yourself, my friend_ ,    
he thinks, not having to exert much effort to reach through the panel of wood and to the mind on the other side. Along with his plea, he uses his powers to smooth the edges of the pain, bring it to the point that it can heal on its own, should the owner really wish it. He hasn't changed much, but realizes he's found who he's looking for moments before the door opens cautiously, revealing a somewhat gawky teenager, maybe a year or two his senior, whipcord muscles standing out on arms bared by the wife-beater he's wearing.

 

“What do you want?” Lensherr (   
_Erik, his name is Erik _   
the roar whispers to him, twining around the image of Lensherr in his head like a contented serpent who's just found its next meal) says cautiously, keeping most of the door between himself and Charles. Charles would find it amusing if it wasn't so cute, and he projects that thought to Erik effortlessly, gauging his reaction. He gets a faintly irritated scowl that's tinged with surprise for his efforts, but also he gets the door opening more than enough to let him in, which is what he was looking for in the first place. Erik looks shocked that it moved, and he starts getting an ache in the back of his head, like when he first found out about his telepathy. The roar whispers to him again, and he shakes it off and looks at Erik, shaking his head. Not that the puzzled scowl isn't patently gorgeous, of course, but he needs to talk to Erik.

 

He walks in, taking in the room in one quick look before he sits on the only chair, smiling up at Erik, giving him the 'advantage' automatically. Charles doesn't need to have the physical upper-hand, never has needed it. He feels more than sees Erik relax at their positions, and his smile widens, even as his mind turns that over a little, trying to figure out why he feels it more than normal, why the very movement of Erik's heart is like a twinge on the edge of his consciousness. The roar rises again, only to be beaten back by the sound of Erik’s voice, which shocks Charles more than he is willing to show.

 

“What do you want?” Erik asks again, a little less cautiously, and Charles cocks his head, delving into his mind to find the information he wants before he answers. What he finds is a snarl of anger, guilt, terror and pain that a cursory sweep hadn't even touched, and he slowly unravels it as he speaks.

 

“My sister's in trouble. She's been taken by the Lab, and you're going to help me get her out.”

 

“Why should I?” Charles smiles, managing to tinge it with sadness. It's always the stubborn ones, apparently. The roar rises yet again, howling in terror and agony at the direction his thoughts are taking, and he manages to push it to the side to complete his mission.

 

“Because you will. I'm not asking, I'm telling you.” He enforces his words with a mental command and his smile widens to a grin of satisfaction when Erik's expression clears, and the man sits on the bed, bringing them to eye level.

 

“What do you need me to do?”

 

  
Raven   


 

The Lab is cold. That’s the first thought that filters into her head. She has no idea how long she’s been here, but trying to shift, to hide, only makes it hurt worse. Everything hurts, and it’s so cold that she wishes she has a blanket to hide under. But there’s nothing but needles in her skin, her arms, legs, even in her face, keeping her from changing. It aches just to blink, and she finds herself crying more often than not, unable to stop the big fat tears from falling, stinging whenever they fall over a needle embedded in her skin.

 

There are hands, too. Covered in sticky rubber gloves, they prod and push, manipulating the needles, making it hurt more. ‘   
Charles will come for me,   
’ she thinks, trying once again to close her eyes, hide her terror. ‘   
He’ll find me, and he’ll kill them.   
’

 

‘   
You really think so, don’t you?   
’ The voice is loud in her mind and she thinks for a desperate moment that it’s Charles, making fun of her like he’s done every day since she joined his family. But then the words and the voice actually filter through the pain and she realizes that it’s a girl, and she sounds curious, like she’s been looking through Raven’s mind and wants what she sees.

 

‘   
Of course! He’s my brother, why wouldn’t he come get me? Of course he will!   
’ Her mental voice sounds thready even to her, but she can’t bring herself to care about that right now. ‘   
Who are you?   
’

 

‘   
My name is Emma, Raven. Why would the Darkness come here? For us?   
’ And Raven has the sickening thought that maybe Emma’s been here too long. She read about Stockholm Syndrome once, in one of Brian’s books in the study, the ones that Sharon hasn’t sold to get gin money for herself and Kurt. She keeps this thought firmly locked away, the way Charles has shown her, and continues to ‘talk’ to Emma.

 

‘   
I never said anything about    
us   
,   
’ she cries out, irritated. ‘   
He only cares about his family, and you’re not family.   
’ She does feel a little pleased, under the fear and irritation, that Charles is a legend even here, in this dismal place. Part of her that she doesn’t like to think about much whimpers at that thought, as if something is wrong with the idea of Charles being who he is. Before she can say any more to the telepath, Emma’s presence retreats, as the burning sensation of the drugs filters in to replace it, leaving her alone again, terror racing in as the hands, which she’s been ignoring as much as she can, retreat. That always means more pain, and she again wonders how long she’s been here. And then the pain gets worse, and she forgets anything but how to scream.

 

  
Erik   


 

He catches Charles just before he hits the ground, alarmed by the sweat on the younger boy’s furrowed brow and the way he just goes limp, pain obvious in his face. The echo that hits him every now and then superimposes a different image, a different version of Charles that he can’t begin to comprehend, older and more innocent, eyes bright with pain and betrayal. After a few moments, Charles’s eyes blink open and Erik’s glad for that, even if Charles’s eyes are blank, unseeing. The echo fades as Charles eyes are once again revealed to him, and he wonders if he didn’t dream it.

 

It must be something to do with his sister, with the Lab, and not for the first time, Erik wonders why he’s helping this family, when they’re doing nothing in return. It must be the fact that a little girl is involved, a younger child. Somehow, no matter how much he’s been through, the mention of a child is enough to guarantee his cooperation. He gets Charles into a sheltered alley, sitting with him until his eyes clear, until he’s fully back to himself again, and then they walk on, neither of them talking. He assumes Charles is busy with something in his head, and he’s used to silence, so it’s not like he minds not hearing the other boy’s voice, but the echo throbs, like they should be talking all the time, about politics and science and a dozen other things that neither of them really care about or understand. But the walk is comfortable, and he busies himself with watching their surroundings, casing everything and making sure no one is paying attention to them. 

 

Gazes slide right past them, no one giving the least indication that they’re even there at all, and he glances at Charles to see that his eyes are slitted, unfocused. He realizes that Charles is reaching into the mind of every person that could possibly see them and telling them that there is nothing there, just a tree or a lamp post or something innocuous that doesn’t get them stepped on. Or he’s just telling them not to worry about the blank spot they see, or to forget that they’ve seen. The possibilities are endless, and he entertains a dozen theories, dismissing half just because he can. It’s a good way to pass the time, and it quiets the echo.

 

  
Charles   


 

He brings Erik back to the safe house and introduces him to the others, which is an exercise of his powers he hasn't had in a long time, what with keeping the fighting down to a minimum. The roaring is quieting, just as it has every time he’s found another person, though it invariably starts up again. Erik's mind is quite strong, resembling the metal which he controls without thought, and he has to keep the mental equivalent of a finger on him at all times to keep himself from losing what little control he's gained. He revels in it, stretching himself more than he has in years, becoming the only thing able to distract him, even momentarily, from Raven's mind, from her pain. The roar is harder to ignore, only quiet when he sleeps, which is less and less often, but he manages to get past it, to do what must be done.

 

He’s fine, until it comes time to sleep. He sets Erik up in the room next to his, the one that will keep their minds the closest together, making it easier to keep an ‘eye’ on him. It’s difficult to input a morality where there is none, at least not one that is useful to him, and even more difficult still to convince Erik that helping them is his idea and not one that’s been added from another source. It won’t hold forever, he knows, but it’ll hold long enough. Long enough to get Raven out of that terrible place. 

 

He’ll help the mutants whose families have shown up to help, and as many others as he can manage, if only to continue promoting his ‘new’ image of benevolence. Though with a nickname like the Darkness, benevolence is a very... subjective term. The roar becomes painful whenever he thinks like this, like the fact that he’s not being altruistic is a foreign thing, not part of him when it so obviously is.

 

He won’t hesitate to kill, just as he’s teaching the others. No mercy for those that would try and control mutants, hurt and terrify them into compliance. He’s got no patience for noncombatants (the roar tries to tell him otherwise), but he forces himself to let all of them help in any way they can. They’ll need people waiting afterward, after all. He has a fair amount of people that are trained to do at least basic first aid, and some of those have mutations that aren’t quite as helpful in a fight as he needs them to be. He doesn’t like it, but he’s learning delegation, to play to strengths instead of seeing every problem like a nail just because he has a hammer.

 

Erik is an enigma, for all that Charles can see into the dark corners of his mind, into all of the places that the boy himself has forgotten about (the roar insists that this shouldn’t be, and for once, he’s able to ignore it). He’s considerate to the others, for the most part, though his personal thoughts run more toward not trusting anyone else to do anything, let alone break into a secret Lab and spring the subjects. 

 

Charles constantly has to refresh his mental command, smooth over the rough edges that pop up every ten minutes. Erik’s mind is rigid, which should make it easier, but there are places that shift like molten metal, force him to reevaluate and relearn how best to keep Erik under his thumb. Pain ratchets through his mind at these times, making it difficult to breathe, but he doesn’t let it stop him. Better that Erik is here, where he can be useful.

 

  
Mikhayel   


 

It gets harder to deal with hearing the little girl next door screaming, and he finally asks for earplugs, which the scientists gladly provide, since they not only block out the little blue girl, they block out everything, leaving him with only his eyes and his nose to tell him if someone’s coming. It’s hard at first, and he gets in trouble a few times before he gets it right, but he manages to be where they want him, when they want him, which makes the majority of his pain stop. Emma, a telepath, another child who’s been here forever, keeps him up to date on what the other mutants are doing.

 

He talks to her once a day, making sure that no one realizes what they’re doing (it wouldn’t do for Emma to get in trouble for using her powers, after all), and catches up on the other ‘residents.’ He finds out the little girl is Raven, and she can change her shape. Emma won’t tell him what his power is, but she’ll tell him anyone else’s (it doesn’t occur to him that since he doesn’t know, she can’t know either). 

 

She’s his ally here, along with Hank, and through her he hears about The Darkness, a mutant that even he’s heard of, stuck in this Lab his whole life. This Raven girl is kin to The Darkness, and part of that scares him, and part of it exhilarates him, making him hope for once that captivity, at least a captivity that burns and pricks, could be at an end.

 

Emma tells him one day that she’s been speaking with the Darkness, has told him what goes on inside. Part of him is frightened, because even though he has no latent psychic powers, even he can feel the growing rage coming from very far away. Another part of him is elated, and he reminds her to make sure that the Darkness knows about Hank, knows that he’s not one of the bad humans, that he’s one of them, helping them as much as he can, and he’s not to be harmed. (He wonders if his wanting Hank to stay safe stems from actual affection for the man, or a wish to continue receiving gifts and other things.)

 

  
Raven   


 

Emma talks to her a lot, and has actually spoken with Charles (or so she says), which makes Raven giddy with relief. Her relief only lasts as long as the breaks between experiments, though, and she begins to break, wanting to tell the scientists everything she knows about herself, about Charles, about    
anything   
, as long as it means they won't hurt her. Emma tries to tell her to stay strong, and so does Charles, on the very rare occasions that he's able to speak to her. 

 

But she can only be so strong for so long, and she begins to slide into the abyss yawning before her, part of her clinging to consciousness and sanity with clawing fingers and her voice gone raw. The part of her that used to talk to her has gone quiet, lending its strength to the fight for sanity. The more she slides, the more she screams, no longer focused on waiting for Charles, her only thought to keeping herself from falling and shattering.

 

  
Erik   


 

He knows that something’s wrong. There are gaps in his memories that he shouldn’t have, minutes lost, time that should be there but isn’t. The echo is for once the thing that alerts him to what’s wrong, though he doesn’t understand why. He knows what’s causing it: Charles, the telepath, the boy that shoved his door open and dragged him into a veritable war that he doesn’t want to fight. 

 

He knows he doesn’t want to fight, but every time he decides that he’s going to leave, those gaps appear and all he remembers is blue eyes and he’s helping the younger ones train, training himself, and firmly helping with the planning. He’s not sure how it keeps happening (the echo throbs louder and louder each time), and it’s annoying at best, distressing at worst, that he has so little control over himself that Charles can take him over like he’s not even resisting. He knows intellectually that he can’t resist, that a part of him obviously doesn’t want to, but it still galls him that he’s forced to stay here, to help the helpless, those that should be able to help themselves but won’t. There are so many, and he knows that he has to help, not only because he can’t not help them, but because of the geas on his mind. He rails silently, and every time, Charles looks at him with an expression that’s approaching apology, and he loses more time, gains more memories of endless sky. The echo is nearly unbearable now, and it comes to the point that he welcomes the blankness, yearns for something to stop the incessant ringing that has nothing to do with the melody of steel and iron that is as much a part of him as breathing.

 

  
Charles   


 

He completely loses track of his telepathic conversation, forgetting that he has to make the others think they’re being spoken to at least once in awhile, and he’s aware that it’s because of his shattering mind. He spends more and more time alone, or only with Erik, partly in an attempt to keep his control over the older boy, and partly as protection. Erik’s mind is metallic and slippery, yes, but it’s sort of comfortable to immerse himself in, pulling some of the metallic properties into his own mind and easing a little of the pain. The roar quiets when he does, softening to a purr that is almost bearable, though the thought that everything is entirely wrong, nothing’s happening the way it should, is a constant companion that he can’t get rid of.

 

As the days pass, objects leap out at him in his mindscape, things begging to be moved, to be touched and shaped to his will. At first he thinks it’s Erik’s powers overlapping his own, that he’s sunk too far into the other boys mind, but when one of the objects is a ceramic bowl in the kitchen, and he strives to figure out if there’s any metal in it, finding none, he finally accepts that he has another power, something that needs to be trained more. The roar quiets a little more, a slightly smug air to its near-silence that he almost resents.

 

Every time he realizes that Erik’s slipping his leash (as it were), he takes the time to laboriously rebuild the layers of control. It hurts to do it, the more he has to, straining his powers to keep a ‘finger’ in everything, one of them stretched quite far indeed. He can control many people at once (he’s never actually hit his limit on the number), but it hurts to extend his range that far, especially when he’s controlling things much closer to home in the bargain. The pain gets worse with every waking moment and his sleeping moments have become very few and far between.

 

His reassertion of control over Erik takes longer each time, and it’s harder. Conversely, the new power he has over movement of objects is growing in leaps and bounds. He only practices it when he’s alone, wanting to keep it as a secret weapon of sorts, something that could very well turn the tides of any altercation. He knows that part of his problem in controlling Erik has nothing to do with the teen’s slippery metallic mind, and more to do with the fact that he’s constantly side-tracked and consumed with the backlash of Raven’s pain and his infrequent contact with the little blonde telepath that keeps him abreast of what’s happening inside. 

 

Their contact is sporadic, and he knows that the times of no contact mean that she’s being tortured or experimented on, though from what he’s learned, the two are no different for these people. He talks to Raven a little, too, mostly reassuring her that he's coming, that she just has to hold on a little longer. He's not sure if she believes him. He hesitates to ask Emma about others, but in the end he does, mostly to keep his new allies from thinking that he’s not paying attention to their family, their friends, that he’s only in it for himself (which he is, of course, but he doesn’t want them to know that). He learns that Alex’s little brother (Scott, a little voice keeps reminding him, his name is Scott) has been through surgeries, many of them to see if his mutation can be controlled by other means than his mind, consequently destroying any control he would have had over it. 

 

He learns about Sean, a boy that once had the power over sonic waves, until his vocal cords had been removed, leaving him mute and helpless. He learns about so many others, children and young teenagers that have been taken over and fucked over by the Lab, leaving them little more than vegetables, little more than balls of insanity that will never be able to interact normally, not even with their own kind. Emma tells him about Hank, a mutant with a physical mutation that’s easily hidden, an ally to the mutants and a very good spy on the scientists. He takes some time to decide how best to use Hank, having seen him in Erik’s memories as the one who helped him escape, no matter how obliquely.

 

It seems easy, but Hank can’t be everywhere at once, and he’s not allowed to work with the new ones anymore, the ones that still remember freedom as something more real than a word. He finds it harder and harder to separate their plights from Raven’s, to keep himself aloof from the other mutants’ pain. In no way will he allow them to stay there, but he doesn’t want the echoes of their pain rattling around in his skull, destroying his concentration even more. It builds and it builds, until he’s nearly buckling under the strain.

 

“This is getting ridiculous, Charles,” Erik says one morning, as they sit in a coffee shop somewhere, waiting for someone that Charles has contacted. The only saving grace is that Charles will know them when they appear, since he doesn’t remember who he talked to or what they can do. “Utterly ridiculous. You’re amassing an army of people you could care less about, to break out a group of people that you barely care about. Why not just admit it’s all for your sister and be done with it?”

 

“Because it started out that way,” he answers, rubbing his temples in imitation of a great headache. His head does hurt, it’s true, but it’s more because of the feeling of hot knives being shoved into his powers than because of any actual physical pain. “It started out that all I wanted to do was get my sister. She’s hurting, Erik, all the time. And then I got in contact with a telepath in there, her name is Emma, and she started telling me about everyone... 

 

“I can’t help it. Now that I know about them, their pain is pressing on me, too, and now your disapproval and I can’t handle it!” He looks up at Erik, taking in his surprised expression with a tired smile. 

 

“Charles...”

 

“I know I’m a bastard, and an undying one at that, but can you please just cooperate until we get Raven and the others? Please? I can’t do all of this and deal with trying to keep you from leaving... I don’t want you to leave. You’re...” The mutant walks up, destroying his train of thought, and he shakes his head, turning a smile on the man, seeing immediately what will happen and trying to decide how to keep it from happening.

 

“Armando, is it? Or do you prefer Darwin? My name is Charles Xavier, and that’s Erik Lensherr. We’ve got a question for you, and a proposition. Would you like some coffee or tea before we start?” It all starts again, and he sends a mental plea for strength to Erik, a plea for him to play along, to trust him. He feels the grudging acceptance and the roar fades back to that niggling feeling, giving him a freedom he hasn’t had in months.

 

  
Erik   


 

To see Charles break down like that, and in public no less, is a jarring shock. Charles is always in control, even when he isn't, and to have him admit that he's having trouble is distressing in a way that Erik doesn’t like thinking about. His capitulation to Charles's plea is almost reflexive, though part of him knows that it's just another manipulation, a pathetic bid for sympathy, that Charles is just using another facet of his personality to control him completely. 

 

He finds himself letting it stand, lending himself freely as an anchor rather than fighting it, as is his usual. He tunes out the pleasantries with the new mutant, having heard already that he is an adapter, able to change his body to fit the situation, from breathing underwater to stopping bullets. It's interesting, of course, but he's spending his time following the line from himself to Charles in an attempt to gain some secrets for himself, find a way to get away when the time comes and the opportunity arises. 

 

What he sees shocks him. Charles is broadcasting the man’s nervousness, and the locations of humans all over the coffeeshop that are watching them, waiting like Erik himself, for an opportunity to arise and the time to come. Beyond that he finds is a rainbow-cacophony of pain and terror, the colors bright enough to burn and he jerks, physically and mentally. 

 

Charles gives him a betrayed look and the rainbow brightens, shoving him out and back into his own head, breathing ragged.    
_  
I understand your need to know, but   
don't do that again. My mind is not a playground, and if you're not trained it can be deadly. If you want to know something, ask. Don't just take.   
_

 

 _Pot, meet kettle_ , he thinks viciously, shoving Charles away with the strength of a wounded panther. Suddenly, his mind is clear and he can see everything, the new little mutant confused and frightened, eyes wide and scared, Charles reeling physically from him, and he gets up. 

 

The time for them to act is now and he takes it with both hands, greedily snapping the control that Charles has on him, knowing that it will return, but relishing the freedom for now. He's been controlled for so long that it hurts to be free for a moment, and he pushes the pain aside. He steels himself and walks toward the door, ignoring the other people unless they try and take him down physically. Charles calls out to him, but he continues, wanting to get as far away as he can before Charles comes after him, controlling him again, and give them as much time as possible to get some kind of plan together. The little mutant they’re meeting has terror written on his features, and the humans are all standing, coming forward, and he runs.

 

He's thrown against a wall just down the street, arms and legs held fast by absolutely nothing. He panics, fighting as hard as he can, to no avail. Charles comes out of the coffee shop, blue eyes blazing and the air around him shimmering faintly. Erik feels a frisson of absolute terror go through him, before great pain rips through his brain. The echo trembles, before the overlaid echo of his own personage in that position rips through him as strongly as the pain.

 

 _  
How the fuck are you going to escape me, Erik?   
_   
Charles's voice belies his countenance, sounding more like he's sad and disappointed than full of rage.    
_  
I'm more powerful than you. I can insinuate myself in your mind so deeply that you forget everything about your life before me.   
_   
Images flit through his brain of so many people, people that are normal, everyday people, all of them acting like they're lost, can't do anything for themselves. 

 

 _  
Now, granted, you won't be as bad as them, seeing as how I need your unique... talents. My sister is still being held by the people that tried to destroy you. And so are others, children, some of them younger than Raven. Are you really going to leave children in that situation?   
_

 

“How... are you doing this?” he asks through the pain of having every bit of Charles's attention focused on him. The attention turns curious almost, and he breathes a sigh of relief as some of it leaves him. He’s never realized just how powerful Charles is, and he thinks with a pang of alarm that if Charles is stretching himself thin and is still this powerful, there’s no hope for him. None at all.

 

“I'm not sure. This is new for me. But it helps. Helps me keep you in line, helps me stay sane.” Erik has a fleeting sense that Charles is trying to convince himself as much if not more than Erik, and he feels the first stirs of terrified pity. That's a mistake, he realizes, as the pain ratchets up again, although he feels that his body is lowered to the ground.

 

 _  
Calm down, Erik. Darwin is one of their agents. This is our chance to get in there. I've already sent word to the others. I've talked to Emma and we can withstand their medications. And she's already alerted the scientist that's been helping us. Play along please, and we'll get out of this just fine.   
_   
Charles's mental voice is pleading and frightened, and he shuts down his instinctive action to fight his way away. 

 

He sees people come forward, and part of him is protesting this because it's the middle of the day and they never take in public, not off a main street, never like this and then there's a cocoon around his mind, protecting him, shielding him as a needle penetrates his arm. His body falls sullen and slow, nonresponsive to his commands, and Charles's mental voice shushes him, so he lets it go, feeling like a small island in the storm before everything goes black.

 

~*~

 

 _  
How are you going to escape me?   
_   
The words reverberate in his head, more firmly a prison to him than the needles pushed into his skin, the drugs making him sluggish and slow to respond. He fights it, the darkness, helped along by the very words that cage him, keep him captive in his own mind. The drugs make him sluggish physically, but he still has full access to his powers, could push the needles out and not have to worry about the problems they cause. But he doesn't, because he's been told not to. He meditates, ignores his body's needs in order to understand what's happening.

 

Charles is protecting him. Charles's powers are keeping him safe. That scares him almost as much as his prison, leaving him confused and docile. Without Charles he wouldn't be here again, but now that he's here, Charles is his only hope. He knows now, what it is to be truly controlled. He can't let go of what Charles wants him to do, or else he'll be abandoned ( _you won't, you won't!_ the desperate cry resounds in his head, only to be ignored). Charles is no longer controlling him as he was; he doesn't need to. All he needs to do is remain Erik's salvation and Erik will do anything to keep him, anything to keep from being left behind. He knows Charles is aware of that, is firmly in his head, seeing his thoughts as they're spun. Charles could stop his train of thought without effort, turn him back into the puppet he'd been, but he won't.

 

Erik knows that Charles is most likely regretting his actions, feels the pain of it like a throbbing headache just at the edge of his senses, but he can't bring himself to forgive the blue-eyed menace, to let go of the weeks of stilted acceptance, the hours of agony that he's felt since he met him. Charles can't help him. Won't help him, when it comes down to it, and so despite the fact that he has a passenger in his head, he is almost more alone than he ever was, unable to hide what he thinks but unable to stop himself from feeling it, either. And therein lies his problem.

 

  
Hank   


 

More than a group of unscrupulous scientists, the Lab’s a collection of sorts, of the best and worst of humankind, the best and worst of    
mutant   
kind. The children and young adults housed here come from all places, all walks of life and all mental strongholds. The strongest of them all is a small boy, skin as blue as the twilit sky, eyes as yellow as corn in July. He's been at the Lab since his birth, one of the oldest residents of the building and yet the one with the most hope of anyone. That hope is kept alive by the thought that for every mutant brought in, their kin is waiting, someone's missing them, and that brings the chances of his salvation closer and closer.

 

The others, they don't understand, not really. They range from the one known only as Omega, the one who can't be allowed to waken or he'll destroy everything, to the little toddler who kills just by opening his eyes. It's strange, if one were to look in from the outside. These people, some of them would be allies, be family, would that things were different, and some would be the bitterest of enemies. Some people would be both: the closest of family and the first to betray, not out of a sense of need, but out of a sense of inability to stop the inevitable. Here, though, everything is different. They are united in a way they wouldn't be otherwise, left to their devices.

 

Here they must be together, must help each other when they can, else they'll go more mad than they already are. Still and all, some of them are beyond help, like little Sean, the 5 year old with no voice, having had it taken from him because of his tantrums, his pain and his fear snarling up to destroy everything. And some of them have escaped, only to be returned. There is 'Phoenix', the little girl with the power to do anything she pleases, and without the willpower and control to know when what she pleases to do is too much. She's escaped a lot, only to be returned by a family that fears her, by regular people too afraid to try and understand her, to help her.

 

Then there’s him. He's a scientist of the Lab, but he's not one of them, can never be one of them. He hides his true nature behind thick glasses and stumbling words and staggering intellect. He's a mutant, and yet he doesn't reside in a room, he helps the scientists with their experiments, watches as more people like him are taken and destroyed, every day, having to endure the fact that he’s betraying his heritage, his very being. Until Mikhayel, the little blue boy, comes. Oh, that's not his name, at least not officially. Officially he is #564, the number given to him as designation of his place in the lab, his order of being brought in and processed. Hank names him Mikhayel, not sure why this small mutant touches his heart so easily.

 

As the years pass and Mik grows older, Hank becomes his primary caretaker, making sure he eats and that he's going to do as the other scientists wish, though the more he does, the more it makes his skin crawl, the more he wants to scoop Mik up and run as far and fast as he can. But he won’t, because then the others will suffer. It's in these times that he teaches, takes the boy under his wing, and thinks that in another life, he could be a father, could do this for real. He knows it's absurd, that there is nothing of him in this boy, yet he recognizes himself in that gaze nearly every day, the cunning to wait, the want to help, the intellect that could topple countries. Mikhayel’s not his, not his family, not related to him at all, but it’s virtually the same anyway, and he goes home every night with a heavy heart for leaving him there.

 

He realizes that just because they are forced into this existence, it doesn't mean that he can't love the child, and care for him as his own. And that thought scares him more than he thinks possible. So he teaches Mik about family, about love and the things that can come from it. And he thinks he's done a good job, every time the boy pleads with him to help someone else, to get them home to their families. And it's almost enough to keep him from thinking of how he's betraying himself and everyone he's ever cared about by getting up every morning.

 

  
Charles   


 

The sterile walls are irritating, and he entertains the thought of just changing the colors for a moment before deciding that that would give the game away much too soon. He casts his power out, keeping the shield around Erik and himself, smoothly inserting one on Raven as he murmurs to her mind that he’s here, that she’ll soon be safe. Cutting off pain receptors is delicate work, and to keep it going for three people at once is a bit taxing, but he manages it with aplomb, keeping his brainwaves steady with barely a thought; this isn’t the first time he’s had someone studying his gifts, after all.

 

Erik is panicking nicely, which means that it’s harder to keep the shell up, to help him retain his access to his powers. He could shut off his panic completely, of course, it wouldn’t be hard, but he’d rather Erik just control it himself. In the meantime, he just keeps it up, keeping the scientists from realizing what’s happening. Poor Raven has nightmares even now that the pain is gone, and he’s deathly afraid that he’s left her too long, that he hasn’t made it in time to really save her.

 

  
Erik   


 

Being back in the Lab is frightening, though he tries not to let it show, tries to keep up the defiant facade that he’s cultivated over the years since he left it. The echo is screaming now, kept at bay only by Charles. Charles’s ‘buffer’ is helpful and all, but the sight of all the equipment that’s made to hurt and made to make the damage permanent is distracting and dangerous, almost creating a Pavlovian response to not being able to use his power. That one scientist that helped him last time is nowhere to be found, and that scares him a little more, because there’s no way that the scientists that are trying to work on him now are the same ones from before, and to have the one man that was nice to him somewhere else (Charles assures him that he’s there, just not able to come here due to rules) is quite unsettling.

 

As the time goes on, Charles tells him that Raven’s next door, and that there are numerous other mutants that have fought off the drugs enough to be useful when the time comes. Erik can’t help but doubt, especially since he can’t feel the needles that are pressed into his skin, can only feel the burning pain that is like a memory from a dream. Charles tells him that the feeling is temporary, that already he’s blocking off the receptors in Erik’s brain that the drugs target, slowly giving him back his control over his powers. 

 

Erik doesn’t want to believe it, but as he lays there, his only contact Charles and the scientists, the feeling of metal all around him slowly trickles in, much like it had the first time, and he relaxes. Charles cautions him to wait, to leave it alone until he has more control, but he ignores him, as well as he is able, removing and reinserting the needles numerous times, trying to figure out the limits of his power right now. The echo settles a little as he regains control, giving him more freedom. And then that scientist is back, and the cameras are off. Erik pushes the needles out completely, unlocking his cuffs. The rush he feels is short-lived however, as the man hushes him and presses him back down.

 

“Listen to me very carefully. I'm going to help you escape, just like I did last time. But this time I'm coming with you.” The man is younger than he originally thought, very close to his own age, in fact, and that stuns him. “I'm a mutant, like you are. I've been trying to get as many of these kids out as I can, but it's been really slow-going, especially working on my own. Add to that that most of these kids have been here for most of their lives, and it gets even harder. I'm going to need your help, and the help of the Darkness. Is he viable?” Erik feels Charles rush through him, pushing himself to the forefront, and Erik becomes a passenger in his own body. It's a strange sensation, and he doesn't really like it, not that he has any say in it.

 

“I'm here, Hank,” Charles says in his voice and he sees Hank stiffen, recoiling a little, and sympathizes with him. Charles using his powers is really quite frightening. He feels more than sees the mental finger Charles shoots at his consciousness, and grins internally. “I'm borrowing Erik here, so tell me what you need to tell me, and do it fast. The next round of 'treatment' is in ten minutes.”

 

“There are 25 mutants here, and ten more at a facility to the north,” Hank says, obviously trying to remember every mutant he's seen here and at the other place. “Most of them are fairly useful once the drugs are out of their system. Here alone we have two teleporters, a boy that can destroy everything he sees if he opens his eyes, another telepath, your sister, and numerous others. Sean is the only mutant here who no longer has access to his powers, and I hate to say it, but it might be better just to put him out of his misery.”

 

“I don't agree, but that's neither here nor there. We'll talk more when you visit Emma in two hours. I need to concentrate to keep Erik and myself from falling to the effects of the drugs, and you need to turn the cameras and recorders back on and get the hell out of there. The other scientists are only 4 minutes away now.”

 

Erik feels Charles withdraw, and lets himself surge forward, glad that he's once again in the front of his own mind. He hates having that happen, but knows it won't be the last time, especially not with Charles going as unhinged as he is. Hank looks shellshocked, more from talking to someone who's using another's body than from talking to the Darkness, he thinks.

 

“Hurry,” he says, returning the needles to his skin in exactly the same places they were before, being careful not to hurt himself more than he has to. Hank pales and rushes to do what he must before slipping out, and Erik settles himself for another session of 'Let's make the Mutant Squirm.'

 

  
Charles   


 

He gleans far more information from Hank than what Erik hears, getting the names of every mutant and all of their powers, information that he didn’t have before because he can’t spare the energy needed to read a scientist’s mind without their knowledge, not with everything else he has to do as well. Hank is a veritable font of other, more useless information; with the information that he could pull from the older man about mutation and genetics alone, he could get his doctorate in Genetics within weeks.

 

He makes sure that he looks exactly as the scientists will expect him to, right down to his brainwaves, and does the same for Erik, though the pain that wracks through him is nearly debilitating, and he loses his thread on the Outside. He hopes that the others remember what they have to do, and then he steels himself for the added physical pain that he knows is to come. 

 

  
The Others   


 

Alex is the defacto leader, now that Charles has given himself up to go on the Inside, and when that last thread between them snaps, the disorientation he feels is nearly painful, and he has to stop in the middle of the hallway to calm his breathing. He’s been aware for awhile now that Charles has been using him to get to Raven, but he also knows that they’ll get Scott out, so he has allowed the control, not fighting it in the least. 

 

Charles is teaching him to control himself, and he’s giving him his little brother back. Since Charles is doing the same for nearly everyone else that has joined the fight, he thinks it’s not such a bad thing to allow a telepath full access to your mind and pretend to be happy about it. It doesn’t hurt, not really, but it’s very weird. He lets the contact stand, and when it goes away, he remembers what he’s supposed to do. He goes for Angel and Logan, the two people that Charles had allowed more freedom in exchange for their skills in planning and combat. He only hopes that with the control being gone completely, they haven’t taken off for parts unknown.

 

Thankfully, they aren’t gone, and he manages to sit them down and figure out what they’ve been working on. It’s pretty straightforward, the plan, and the only thing he can think of is that something’s going to go wrong. Someone (his mind supplies that it will be Erik, but he ignores it) is going to screw it up, is going to come up with a different plan that they haven’t accounted for, and everything will go to shit. When he brings that up, however, Logan just grins, a feral thing that has less to do with humor and a lot more to do with threat. 

 

He eventually leaves them to their planning and checks on the others, the ones that will be going with them, but more importantly the ones that will be staying behind. There’s a younger girl named Ororo, whose power lies with controlling weather, and she’s one of the ones that elects to stay behind. First thing he thinks is that she’s a coward, but then he realizes that she’s just got that much control, and that much range. She’s going to cover their approach for them, and he hopes that Logan and Angel have accounted for the ferocity of her ‘cover’.

 

The others are mere medics (mere medics doesn’t even begin to cover it, but it’s the best he can do), and he lets them sort out between themselves who’s doing what and what injuries will be treated where. There’s only one medic who’s coming with them, and her medical talents are purely mundane. Her mutant power is much more useful at least in a fighting sense; she can walk through walls. Kitty is a strong woman (he says woman, he means girl; none of them but Logan are out of their teens) and she’s ready and raring to go, even while she helps the medics set up the infirmary. He makes a mental note to ask her out for coffee once all of this is over and moves on.

 

It takes a few hours to check on everyone, and then it’s time to just wait. And that’s the thing that rubs him the wrong way, the waiting. He’s never been good at it, and with everything that’s at stake, it’s even worse. He doesn’t want to wait, it’s too hard, but he forces himself to do it. Because without Charles, they have to wait, and it’s the only way to get Scott back from those assholes that have hurt him.

 

  
Charles   


 

When the moment comes, it’s fast, and he sends out a blast-wave of information to Logan, the only one that’s old enough (older than anyone, even him, supposes) to take it all in, to process it and act on it in a timely manner. After that he sends out tendrils to the others in the Lab that he’s been in contact with, including Hank. Hank has been waiting, and he can feel the instant that the knowledge is assimilated and worked; the man is more than ready. Emma takes his tendril and amplifies it, sending it out to her contacts that he hasn’t had the time or energy to contact, and everything is ready.

 

It’s after dark, and the Lab is at minimal staffing, only the scientists who live in the building are still there, and he paralyzes most of them with a simple flex of his mind. They don’t get to sleep through their deaths (his brain feels like it’s going to rip apart; the roar is debilitating now), and the group is coming. He rips the needles out with a thought and unlocks the door with another; it’s time to go.

 

  
Erik   


 

He feels the siren call of Charles’s mind, and he reacts like he’s been waiting for it, waiting for the moment that he can be useful. He gets up, having removed the needles much earlier, and runs for the door, ripping it off its hinges. He feels the slight disapproval from Charles and ignores it. He rips other doors off their hinges as he goes, some of them hitting the opposite walls in his haste. His priority is to get to the scientists, to get rid of them in the most permanent of ways. The echo in his head is reverberating stronger than ever, and he shuts it out, trying not to let it control him.

 

When he hits the residential barracks, he balks. There’s minimal metal in the doors and walls, all of them seemingly normal, and it’ll take more effort to get into them, more time to get the doors open. He sets his mind to it and gets started. He knows he won’t face much opposition, and what little there will be he’s ready for. He has to be ready for it, because this isn’t any kind of practice, this is real.

 

The first three are frozen, the fear in their eyes a driving force behind his decision to make their deaths quick, but not painless, no. One of them is older, a man whose pacemaker sings to him in discordant chorus that he’s only too happy to silence. The man will die of ‘natural causes’ which makes him laugh a little inside. The others are harder, more bloody. Of course none of them keep metal things near them, even their fillings are porcelain. Why in the hell hadn’t he killed these two the first time? He makes it quick, slitting their throats with brutal efficiency and the scalpel he’d pilfered from one of the rooms on his way.

 

 _  
Hurry, Erik. Time is running out.   
_   
Charles’s voice is like a shock of cold in a burning furnace and he hurries, moving on to the others, subduing some before killing them, getting a cut on his face for his troubles. He’ll have to get that looked at before he leaves for good. The thought sends a strange pang through him, and he shakes it off as he moves on. It’s time to get the others out, now that the threat is neutralized. At least for now.

 

  
Raven   


 

The lights are too bright when she opens her eyes for what feels like the first time, but she forces herself to move. Charles is in her mind, at least the edges, telling her that she can’t turn into one of the scientists, that she has to stay as herself, and so she simply moves, running out and catching the arm of a small boy who’s wandering, his eyes covered by a sterile dressing.

 

“We’ve gotta move!” Her voice is hoarse, alien, and the boy turns to face her, unable to speak. She simply shifts her hold to his hand and pulls him along, looking into the rooms as they run toward the noise and lights at the end of the corridor. They started collecting others, most of them children, but she stops at the sight of a grown man, hooked up to more machines than she’d been.    
  
_Go, sister, we’ll get him._   
  
She nods, even though the voice was only in her head, and moves on. She knows that Charles is happy that she’s functional, but she’s afraid of what will happen when the adrenaline stops flowing, what she will become when she doesn’t have to move anymore.

 

They make it to the epicenter and the sheer amount of mutants, all in one place, and all working together, is staggering. Almost none of them are older than Charles by more than a few years, and she realizes that this is the best and brightest of the mutant community. Charles really has gone all out to get her out. She whistles as best she can, impressed, only to shove the boy behind her as a blond man comes running over. He stops, holding his hands up in surrender.

 

“Scott! Scott, it’s me, it’s Alex!”

 

“Awex?” The boy’s voice is thready, but he tugs on her arm. She pulls him back around and he stretches an arm out toward the voice of the man, who comes forward and pulls him into a tight hug. 

 

“Missed you Buddy. Stay with Raven; she’s gonna keep you safe, okay?” She balks when he says it, but then she realizes that if the other kids stay with her, they’ll be safe simply because Charles won’t let anything else happen to her. She gathers the littler ones to her and starts to move, looking around to make sure that nothing is coming that isn’t friendly. 

 

Once, she has to transform herself, getting bigger for a moment in order to shield the little ones from a piece of falling equipment, though the piece never hits her. She looks and Charles’s hand is out, pulling the piece toward him and tossing it at one of the security members that have started to fight back. If the opposing force wasn’t mutants, the security would probably be more than adequate, but with the sheer number and scope of mutations represented, they have no possible chance. 

 

But impossibly, the security people are gaining the upper hand, and Raven takes cover with the kids in a little run-down closet-thing, picking up one of the discarded rifles to make sure that they can be protected. She hears screams of pain, some of them familiar, before a sudden shriek of metal makes her drop the gun and cover her ears. To hear silence directly after is frightening, and she peeks out, only to see the security men wrapped in pieces of pipe and girder, some of them moaning weakly, half of them strangled with their own guns.

 

Standing in front of them is a man, smiling at the other mutants like he’s their best friend. She covers her own mouth, terrified, because she recognizes him. He was one of them that came and got her from the apartment. He’s the head of the Lab, at least that’s what she thinks, and her brother is giving ground to him. She can see the line of his shoulders, the tension evident in their stiffness, and she looks again. There’s a helmet on his head, and it gives him the look of a demon, the smile turning infinitely sinister. The guards are left choking by a tall teenager, hands outstretched and blood staining his formerly pristine white patient shirt, small bits of metal swirling around him like a small tornado. The boy is shaking though, and she wonders if he knows the man, what their history is. One of the children whimpers quietly and she whirls, ready to cover a mouth, only to see all the little ones, eyes closed and ears covered, as if the man is just one more bad dream among a thousand. 

 

The other blue boy is holding tight to one of the littlest, letting her bury her head in his chest and hide. She tries to smile at him, but she can’t. She turns back to see the boy shaking with what she had first thought of as fear, but she realizes that it’s fury. Charles is there, too, fingers to his temple and one hand out, as one by one the guards behind the man stop moving, collapsing from either the weight of his mind or the crushing force of his new power. Raven doesn’t want to know which. She’s always known that Charles is a force to be reckoned with, a dangerous boy, but here he’s a deadly man, none of the morals that the two of them have pretended to have for years showing in his manner. 

 

The man continues smiling, letting them do as they will, doing nothing to stop his men’s deaths. Raven isn’t sure whether she admires that, or if it’s the most repulsive thing she’s ever seen. She thinks, with a half-hysterical inner giggle, that it doesn’t really matter, not at the end, whoever is left standing. She covers her own mouth, afraid that any little sound she makes will hurt Charles, and the boy who’s standing with him. When the last of the guards fall, the pieces of metal that were holding them up clang to the ground, and Raven jumps at the loud noise, shrinking back in the doorway.

 

“You’re Charles Xavier,” the man says, his voice like velvet rubbed the wrong way, and she shivers. 

 

“And you’re Sebastian Shaw,” Charles says, and she thinks she has to be the only one to hear the fear in his voice, barely controlled beneath his normal icy calm. But the boy next to him twitches, the metal spinning faster, and she knows he can hear it, too. Shaw laughs softly, and she can’t tell whether it’s out of confidence or bravado, and she’s not sure she wants to know.

 

“You and I could have been great together,” Shaw says, not looking at Charles, but at the teen next to him. “Erik Lensherr. You know you were promised to me? Your father promised you to me in return for his freedom. But the poor bastard died and your mother ran, taking my property with her. So when I finally found her, and you, I tried to collect my property. You got away from me then, son, but not now. It’s time for you to take your place.” The metal spun faster and faster, making Raven afraid for Charles, before abruptly falling to the ground. 

 

“Erik...” Charles’s voice is tight, annoyed, and Erik doesn’t answer, just shakes his head and steps forward. Shaw’s smile grows and Raven shivers, hating her fear but unable to let go of it.

 

“Why did you let my father go?” Erik asked, voice echoing slightly in the suddenly silent room.

 

“Because he was creating you for me, of course. You didn’t think your birth was a happy accident, did you Erik?”

 

“I was planned to be like this?”

 

“Well, you were planned to have a mutation, yes. Of course, it’s nearly impossible to predict what mutation will manifest, but you were my greatest achievement.”

 

“Erik...” Charles’s voice is darker, a little deeper, and Raven flicks her eyes to him, surprised, though she really shouldn’t be. “Don’t listen to him, Erik. He doesn’t understand what we are anymore than we do.”

 

“Oh, Charles, you’re next on my explanations list,” Shaw says, spreading his hands exspansively. “You can’t read me, can you?”

 

“No, but I can definitely touch you.” Charles sweeps his hands out and Shaw goes flying for the wall, bouncing off it like a rubber ball. he lands on his feet, grinning wider.

 

“Thank you, Charles.” And Shaw does the one thing that Raven definitely isn’t expecting. He begins to clap. Charles and Erik hit the wall on either side, a nearly invisible wave rushing past them, and straight toward her position. Scott is pressed against her back and she spins, pressing him to the floor.

 

“Drop!” She hears frightened movement moments before a wave of heat passes over her back, the doorjamb and the walls getting bisected. The screams are nearly soundless as shelves fall and wires spark brighter, and she just holds onto Scott, closing her eyes and trying not to scream herself.

 

“That was a bad idea Charles, at least for you. You see, I’m one of the first mutants, you could say. I have a unique power to absorb energy. And I can also use that power to retaliate. The more I’m hit, the stronger I get. The more energy you throw at me, the more energy I have to throw back. So I’d be careful what you do, if I were you.” 

 

Raven doesn’t want to listen, doesn’t want to know what will happen next, but she’s part of a very captive audience, so she carefully looks out, to see what’s happening. Shaw is brushing off the shoulders of his suit, and Charles is standing again, blood running down his neck from a wound on the back of his head. She’s not sure how bad it is, and she can’t exactly find out, so she shifts her gaze to Erik.

 

The taller teen is standing as well, looking unhurt but for a tic in one of his shoulders, and she sees the wall where he was thrown is stamped with something that looks like the shape of a body. Amazed, she keeps her eyes open for what happens next.

 

“He may not be able to touch you, and I may not be able to hold you, but...” Erik says, stepping forward like he has no worries about the man before him. Looking at Shaw, Raven sees why at once. There’s a thick steel cable, frayed at the end, hovering over Shaw’s head. Shaw isn’t even aware of it, and she has a feeling Charles only knows because Erik does. 

 

“But?” Shaw asks, examining his nails boredly. “What could you possibly do? How could you possibly take me down, little boy?”

“You forgot one thing, Shaw,” Erik says, the smirk in his voice palpable in the otherwise still room, the steel cable creeping closer and closer. “That you’re not fighting just me, or just him. You’re fighting both of us, and that makes all the difference.” The cable snaps to, yanking the helmet away and Charles’s fingers are to his temple in an instant, the fingers of his other hand splayed before him. Shaw is caught with his hand halfway to the helmet, eyes wide with a sudden fear.

 

“I know why you had that helmet created, Shaw,” Charles says, and she sees another image, superimposed on this one, where they’re older, and Charles is in so much pain, so much more pain than the physical she sees all the time, and then it’s gone, and Charles is the same as he always has been, utterly in control and _hers_. “You see, I’m in your mind now, and I can see your darkest fears, your greatest fantasies. I can kill you now, like this, and you know that. You visited the hospital where I was placed, and you visited my father before he died.

 

“You knew exactly what I would become, and it terrified you. So you left me alone, gave me a wide berth, as well you should. But then you made the mistake of coming after my family. You see the little girl who can change her shape is my sister. Oh, you didn’t know that? Well, that’s just too bad. It’s sad to think that she wouldn’t have been here if I’d broadcast it just a bit better, and for that I owe her a lifetime of apologies. But you, Sebastian? All I owe you is a ticket to hell. Oh, and look, here’s Erik with the payment.”

 

A small sliver of metal hovers in front of Shaw’s face, and Raven sees his eyes widen, the fear creeping in faster and faster until the cruelty is buried by it, and he becomes just one more mark, one more victim of the Darkness. The piece of metal moves in a figure eight pattern, and Charles lets Shaw’s eyes follow it, faster and faster until it’s a blur in front of his eyes. Charles drops to one knee, and suddenly the metal flies through Shaw’s head.

 

The screams are deafening, both those from Charles and from Shaw himself, as the piece rips out the other side. Charles drops his hands and slumps to the floor, clutching his head, and the only thing that keeps Raven from running out to him is the crippling fear that Shaw is still alive. When his body falls to the floor, lifeless, she sags, tears falling from her eyes. She’s out of the room like a shot, ignoring the bits of glass and metal on the floor, heedless of the cries from the other children. Charles is awake, and he smiles at her when she skids to a stop on her knees next to him.

 

“I love you, little sister, I told you I’d get you out.” His voice is raspy, and she just hugs him, too overcome to even check his injuries.

 

“Jerk.”

 

The fight is over; there’s no one else coming, and Raven lets herself collapse, all the pain and fatigue that the adrenaline had warded off coming back in a rush. Charles sits up in an instant, blood splattering his shirt and some of it in her hair, but she can’t begin to be bothered by it, too relieved to touch her brother again.

 

“Raven, you’re all right, it’s going to be okay.” She lets him run his fingers through her hair and wonders why everything’s going dark. “Go to sleep, Raven. We’ll be home soon.” She does, ignoring any of the sounds around her. In her dreams, the pain is gone and she’s in her bed at home.

 

  
Erik   


 

Killing Shaw is like opening a floodgate, and Erik waits for the pain of his mother’s loss to go away, waits for everything to go back to what he used to know as normal, but nothing changes. The medico is going around to the children and the other combatants, waking them up, checking their injuries, and he watches with the detatched air of someone who sees none of what he’s looking at. 

 

Killing him was supposed to end it. He was the last one, the one that    
mattered   
, but all he feels is an empty void where the relief should be. The people around him are like a blur, and he stares at the corpse in front of him, trying to figure out why nothing is fixed. He supposes that part of him is waiting for his mother to come walking through the door, though he’d buried her himself years before. 

 

The clang of the helmet hitting the floor as he loses his control over his power jars him, and he looks at it for a moment, before reaching for it. His hand stops inches away from it, and he scowls, willing Charles to leave him the hell alone. His will is, as always, ignored, and he sighs, pulling his hand back and contenting himself with thinking about what he wants to do now that he’s not hunting, and not being hunted. His mind comes up blank, and he’s not quite sure whether it’s because of Charles or because he’s been so consumed with this for so long that he simply can’t think about an after.

 

The noise around him fades as he tries to figure out what to do, and he doesn’t realize that anyone is near him until Charles’s hand falls gently onto his shoulder. “It’s time to go, Erik. You’re welcome to stay as long as you like.”    
_  
As long as I like, Erik. I don’t want to let you go.   
_   
“C’mon, get up, let’s get the little ones out of here.” 

 

He doesn’t even bother sighing, just gets to his feet and starts to follow the younger boy from the facility. The echo of another scene, another Shaw, another Charles and a completely other him stagger him neatly, and he stumbles, nearly tumbling back down the stairs. The echo was there, he realizes, all through Shaw’s death, a different scene, a different life playing out before his eyes. And in that scene Charles is older, wiser, and gentler, something that Erik can’t comprehend when thinking about the boy walking in front of him.

 

The Charles he knows is dark, and wounded, and more than a little insane, not bright and happy and soft like the other one. He’s not sure which one he’d rather know, but he doesn’t spend much time dwelling on it, since he’s kind of stuck with the one he has now. He feels a thrum of amusement from Charles and contents himself with glaring at the bloodstained back before him, uselessly plotting various ways to bring down his jailer.

 

  
Charles   


 

Having a hand in killing Shaw is both exhilarating and frightening, and the roar is a constant reverberation in his head, telling him that something absolutely isn’t right about what has happened. He shoves it aside, knowing that it’s not what he wants to do, but what he has to do that’s important, at least right now. He has all the time in the world to deal with the fact that he’s fractured, once he’s got Raven home and the others sorted out. As it stands he has to keep moving and he can’t hesitate.

 

A tingle in the back of his mind tells him that Erik is thinking up more and more creative ways to end him, and he laughs out loud, feeling the anger and confusion rolling off the taller teen in waves. He knows that he should let him go, that it’s the bargain struck between them, but there’s no one to tell him to do it, not now. Raven could, but she’s asleep and he knows that he has at least a few more hours with that mind, with the quicksilver solidity that he’s come to depend on. 

 

He should try and find a way to keep Erik without controlling him, but it’s too late now; the only person Charles hasn’t controlled in all of his life is Raven, and not even Erik can compare to that. The only alternative is to let him go. And Charles doesn’t want to contemplate that.

 

  
**  
Two Months Later   
**   


 

  
Raven   


 

It’s getting easier to be alone, to be in her room by herself, to not rely on Mikhayel to keep her company when her nightmares drag her away from real life, and Raven knows that it’s a good thing. She does her best to enjoy it, but then she sees Charles and everything just falls apart. Charles is getting worse, even as she gets better. There’s something new in him that scares her, scares everyone that has decided to stay, to have a safe place to get over the absolute hell of the Lab.

 

Charles gets worse every day, simply because he has nothing to fall back on. Erik is gone, as far and as fast as he possibly can be, and Raven stops enough to wonder why he stayed as long as he did. Charles confides in her, over and over, eyes fever-bright, that he let Erik go the second day, when she asked him to. But the Erik-shaped hole in the mansion is only a few weeks old. She doesn’t understand why he stayed, and then left.

 

And Charles is, of course, in no fit state to tell her. So she goes to Hank, asks him to help her find Erik again. She needs to know what happened, why her brother is acting like... like a softer version of himself, why he hasn’t gone out to search for victims in weeks, why he sits alone in the study, staring at a dusty board for a game that he doesn’t even play. 

 

It takes more time than she cares to waste to track him down, to find the teenager that ran out on her brother right when he needed the most help. Erik doesn’t look much better, staring at a small coin, obviously filched from the Lab; it’s got their symbol on it, the stylized eagle, and he’s made scores in the soft metal, counting down to something that she’s not sure she wants to know.

 

“Why?” she asks, barging into the room, adopting Charles as her disguise since she’s just a little miffed at the Polish boy.

 

“Why what, Raven?” he asks quietly, spinning the coin around his fingers like a bastardized version of Russian Roulette.

 

“How’d you know it was me?” she asks, momentarily halted in her tracks. Erik taps the side of his head in answer.

 

“Your brother was up here for a few months, I’d recognize him anywhere. You’re missing the small mole on his left temple by the way, thought you should know.” She sighs and changes back to herself, sitting on the edge of the bed.

 

“Why did you leave?”

 

“I can’t stay there, Raven. It was either leave or die. I like living.” 

 

“Die? Charles wouldn’t kill    
you   
...”

 

“Wouldn’t he? Every moment I spent with him in my head was a torture, and even now I can feel the echoes of it in my head, the feel of him up there, poking around, rearranging things to his satisfaction. I like having my mind to myself, Raven. It’s something that I don’t think you would understand.”

 

“Why not?” 

 

“Because you’re family.” She scowls at him and he smiles sadly. “How is he?”

 

“He’s not himself anymore, he’s not my Charles anymore. He’s like a shadow from a dream of a different life, and I don’t like it.”

 

“Maybe he’s how he’s supposed to be. Maybe we’re all learning to be who we’re supposed to be.” Erik’s eyes show that he doesn’t believe that, not really, and Raven just stares at him, making sure not to blink at all, waiting on him to speak some more. “All along, I’ve been hearing these echoes, like sounds from another place crossing over into this one. I’m sure that Charles has felt them, maybe heard them himself.”

 

“You mean like flashes of another place, another person that’s supposed to be you, or at least you think so?”

 

“Yes.” She can’t help it; she laughs.

 

“Erik, those aren’t real. You’re here, sitting on this bed, playing with that stupid coin. You’re real. That other Erik, that other Charles, that other Raven? They’re dreams of who we could be if the world was better. Everyone has them. But we can’t be better, we can’t change who we are just because we see a picture in our head, or hear a voice telling us that it’s not right.

 

“We can’t be anything other than who we are. So I need you to figure out who the fuck you are and come help my brother be who he’s supposed to be. The him that needs to exist here, not the one he’s trying to become. Can you do that Erik? Can you forget about the past for just one second and help? Because if you can’t you might as well come and kill him yourself. It’s what you’d be doing anyway, might as well make it quick.”

 

She waits, staring at the frayed coverlet beneath the blue scales on her fingers, trying not to fidget. Erik thinks for a long time, and before she can do anything, the door opens behind her.

 

“See yourself out?” Erik’s voice is cold, and even, and she all but gives up on any hope that Charles can be made whole again. She gets up and goes to the door, not even bothering to look back. It’s too late for her words to do any good.

 

When she gets back to the mansion, Charles is sitting in the window of the study, staring down at her with an expression that is somewhere in the middle of curiosity, fear, and carelessness, and that almost breaks her before she even gets inside the building. When she goes to see him later, he looks up at her from the chess board and smiles.

 

“Will Erik be continuing our game?” She just shakes her head and hugs him, not sure exactly what to say or do. ‘So this is how the Darkness falls.’


End file.
